Lobbyists say road safety should be major election issue

PM - Monday, 27 September , 2004 18:29:10

Reporter: Annie Guest

MARK COLVIN: If 18 people had died in an air crash yesterday, it would have been on the front page of every paper in the country. Instead, 18 Australians died on the nation's roads and it wasn't quite such a big story.

But the Monash Accident Research Centre and some transport lobbyists say it should be. They want road safety to be a major Federal election issue.

The weekend's crashes happened in four States. Some involved collisions between cars, others involved cars hitting pedestrians. The victims' ages ranged from eight to sixty-two.

Annie Guest reports.

ANNIE GUEST: There was a variety of causes of the sad human toll of 18 in the road accidents in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia.

They included highway accidents, a collision at a suburban intersection, a single car rollover where alcohol was suspected to be involved, and a hit and run.

But a researcher with the Monash University Accident Research Centre, Bruce Corben, says reducing the 1,200 annual road deaths should be a key election issue.

BRUCE CORBEN: There's a lot of inertia in the system that keeps it heading in the same direction and I think it needs some resourcing and some very clear changes in direction by government.

ANNIE GUEST: Bruce Corben says there's a common element to road accidents and the remedies are not always expensive.

BRUCE CORBEN: The issue of speed is certainly the crucial, single most important issue I guess in all types of crashes and all sorts of traumas.

ANNIE GUEST: Would you be looking for speed limits to be brought down even further than that standard 50 in urban areas now?

BRUCE CORBEN: Certainly in selected locations I'd say yes – environments where you've got school children crossing, if you've got people in shopping environments, 40 kilometres an hour and even lower may be more appropriate.

ANNIE GUEST: And what sort of speed limits do you believe should be used to reduce some of those crashes in rural areas?

BRUCE CORBEN: In rural areas I think it's much less likely that we need to modify speeds… using roundabouts, for example, so that when people do make mistakes they do so at speeds that don't lead to death or serious injury.

LAUCHLAN MCINTOSH: What the Automobile Association wants on behalf of its member motoring clubs all around Australia is that road safety should become a key ministerial responsibility for any incoming government.

We think that we should see a vast expansion of the national black spot program. We need to see serious escalation of funds in the maintenance for roads to fix a lot of the small things that cause accidents.

ANNIE GUEST: But the Government would say, look, we've given $650-million over five years to roads.

LAUCHLAN MCINTOSH: Well, the road network is a vastly important part of what we do, but the reality is we've got this huge backlog in health and in injury care in Australia. We have to address it at the source. We need a total systems approach to road safety, not a piecemeal approach.

ANNIE GUEST: But the Transport Minister, John Anderson, says the Government's is confident it's doing all it can to tackle the problem, including promising an addition $650-million over five years

JOHN ANDERSON: Well I think broadly speaking they are right, and that is precisely why we're moving to a much bigger, much better focused and targeted approach to road construction and the coordinated rebuilding of rail to make our roads safer under what we call Auslink.

ANNIE GUEST: These groups, the Australian Automobile Association and the Monash Medical Research Centre in particular are saying while the $650-million package is welcome, that it's not enough to address their concerns.

JOHN ANDERSON: The $650-million is a further top-up of the already announced three-and-a-half billion increase from last year. We are, I can honestly say that, I believe we are accepting the challenge and we are moving towards it.

Given that the States have a huge role to play in infrastructure, it would be a very welcome thing to see them match some of the increases we're talking about.

ANNIE GUEST: And what about the Automobile Association's calls for a special minister to deal with these issues?

JOHN ANDERSON: I don't really see the need for that, frankly. We have the Australian Transport Council, which I chair.

ANNIE GUEST: A spokesman for Labor's shadow Transport Minister, Martin Ferguson, says the ALP has promised upgrades to certain routes and black spots but is yet to announce its transport package.